


in the cold

by flight815kitsune



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, McCall Pack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:58:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2564048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flight815kitsune/pseuds/flight815kitsune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s cold. Mind-numbing, prickling cold. The kind of cold where people with dogs wished they had cats just so that they wouldn’t have to crack the door to let Fido out. The kind of cold that caused space heater sales to skyrocket and little kids to get their tongues stuck to metal on the playground. Cold where the wind sliced through a jacket like one of Kira’s knives and bounced around your lungs like a bullet ricocheting off of concrete and metal.</p>
<p>It’s cold, and Stiles is stuck in the middle of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the cold

It’s cold. Mind-numbing, prickling cold. The kind of cold where people with dogs wished they had cats just so that they wouldn’t have to crack the door to let Fido out. The kind of cold that caused space heater sales to skyrocket and little kids to get their tongues stuck to metal on the playground. Cold where the wind sliced through a jacket like one of Kira’s knives and bounced around your lungs like a bullet ricocheting off of concrete and metal.

It’s cold, and Stiles is stuck in the middle of it.

The supernatural threat of the year had first shown its appearance with some frost-damaged gardens. Soon enough, people started turning up missing.  When corpses showed up with frostbite, their connections got the information to them fast. It paid off to have people in the hospital, vet’s office, school, police department, and various government organizations when your pack was a key factor in keeping order in a very paranormally inclined area. The victims were usually young men, though an older man and a woman had also fallen victim. The bestiary wasn’t much, but between it, a few lucky google searches, and people who had originated in the land of the rising sun, the answer was easy enough to come by- Yuki onna.

His job was just to make it to the loft (which totally wasn’t referred to as The Batcave, The Watchtower, or Avengers Mansion when Derek wasn’t around to comment.), meet up with the rest of the pack, and figure out where she was going to strike next. Which was all fine in theory, but turned out to be a little bit more complicated in practice.

It’s not that the Jeep can’t make it through the snow, at first. It’s that he can’t see the road. Slow and steady can’t really compensate for human vision and reflexes. He pulls to what he hopes is the shoulder. Sleet tinkles against the windshield. He sends a text to Scott, “Storm’s worse.”  as the battery icon flashes red. The spare charger is beside his bed at home, next to a small stack of papers that he needed to go through, a set of slightly aromatic gym clothes and a pair of headphones that needed detangling.

The news had called the hail uncommon, but normal. The frost was unusual. The flurries were the snow of the decade. When the blizzard had started coming down, they hadn’t known how to write it off. If the residents of Beacon Hills didn’t recognize that they lived in a weird place after all the years of unexplained occurrences, three feet of snow in June should probably do the trick. Probably. It was better to be cautious when gauging the intelligence of the citizens of Beacon Hills.

The snowflakes change from thick lumps to something closer to ice, and while the visibility still isn’t great, it’s better. When he tries to pull back onto the road the Jeep won’t move. He messages a quick “Stuck” before opening the door to be greeted by the weather. He steps out and the snow is up to his knees. The ice beneath the heavy cover is a solid sheet that doesn’t even crack when he stomps down on it. Frantic brushing with his hands reveal a tire embedded in the ice. Fused to the road in a way that the kitty litter in the back wouldn’t be able to help with. As he climbs back in, the snow follows him. What hadn’t melted into his clothes at the first opportunity falls off in chunks onto his floor and trickles into his shoes. When he checks his phone for a reply he is greeted by a dark screen. The wind howls and there is a noise not unlike a woman’s laughter underneath the high whine of the wind. “Well, that’s not creepy at all.” He mutters to himself.

He sits in the car, tapping his fingers on the wheel and listening to the radio. Glancing at the clock wasn’t a great indicator of time when he can’t say when he texted Scott in the first place. Still, time seems to stretch on. When he can’t remember the next line to a song he had heard a thousand times, he pauses. He rolls the windows down and shuts the engine off. A vague memory of the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning is enough to make him risk the cold.

The heat fades from the car quickly. The wet clothes cling to all the wrong places. The denim itches against his skin. What starts as an occasional shiver soon leaves him vibrating. Scott will be here soon.

He’s left staring into the flying flakes and darkening sky. It’s like watching the static on a television screen. If there are creatures like banshees, but more visual, they’d probably appreciate something like this.

He could almost swear he could see a figure in the whirling chaos.

He knows he’s not supposed to fall asleep. You fall asleep with this kind of cold and you die. Or go into a coma and attempt communication with a not-exactly-evil tree stump. That definitely wasn’t on the list of life experiences that needed repeating.

The snow seems to whisper as it blows across itself.

The creeping sensation that something is wrong is nothing compared to the annoyance at the way his clothes are stuck to him. He’s practically burning up. He has to be sweating. Pulling off the hoodie is a great start. Laying it and his tee shirt on the seat beside him just makes sense. If he had more leg room, the jeans would be gone, but slipping off his shoes is possible. The socks don’t want to come off. Maybe in a minute. First, he needs to stop.

He just has to close his eyes for a minute. He isn’t falling asleep.

A howl that isn’t the wind blares in the distance like the world’s most supernatural alarm clock. He has to look. He doesn’t know why, exactly, but it seems important. When he pries his eyes open, there is a naked woman sitting on the hood of his Jeep. The lines of her back taper to a narrow waist. The swell of her hips is the perfect contrast to long legs that vanish into swirling flakes before reaching her feet. The curves of her breasts are just visible. Her dark hair whips around in the wind. Blue-tinted lips are the only splash of color among the black, white, and greys. He can hear her voice, but can’t make out the words.  She starts to fade into nothing, like she wasn’t even there at all, when she becomes enveloped in fire with a horrible shriek.

The flames whip up with the wind before they extinguish. Bullets fly and pierce their target. There’s the snap of jaws and the breaking of branches. Red stands out against the snow. More fire.

Helping. Shouldn’t he be helping? But his limbs don’t want to move. The crackling of the flames is louder than it should be, the sound of the wind an unearthly wail.

He can hear the ice getting kicked off his door and mumbles, “Don’t dent my Jeep.”

The voice is gurgling. The winds are silent and the snow is no longer falling. There are growls and curses.

The ice breaks off of his door. A woman’s hand brushes his cheek and feels for a pulse on his throat. Her touch is so hot. He turns his attention away from the fight and back to her. He knows her. He knows he knows her. He just doesn’t know who she is.

She’s scared. Her cheeks are red from more than the cold. She looks pretty when she cries. He tells her so.

“Oh thank God.”

She looks pretty when she smiles, too.

She holds her cell up to her ear, only to tap her foot. “Melissa’s not picking up!” She shouts to what looks like an unfair fight in the background.

“Try my dad.” He doesn’t break his golden eyes away from his target.

She flips through her contacts and places the phone between shoulder and ear. “Hi, Doctor Dunbar, we met before, after the incident with the ghouls… No. This is the banshee. Well, you remember the guy who figured out which graveyard they were in and kept making zombie jokes? I think he’s hypothermic and wanted to know…” She glances back over to him. “Yeah? No. He took off his shirt for some reason?” She sighs. “Can you walk?”

It takes him a moment to realize the question had been directed towards him. “Why?”

She returns to her conversation. “I don’t think so… We can do that. I’ll call back.” She wedges her phone into a too-small pocket. “Can someone give me a hand?”

A man gets his arm around him. Names are highly overrated. All that really matters is that this guy is strong.

He doesn’t want to move, but they make him stumble through the snow.

That… that seems like an excessive amount of fire.

****  
  
  


“We need to warm you up-” she says in her calming tone. “We need to warm him up. Now.” she says in her concerned tone, which really betrayed the falseness of the calming tone when the guy subjected to it was still within earshot.

“It’s not over!” Scott growls and there’s the whoosh of moving flames.

He’s gently lowered into the back of a police vehicle “Derek!” Lydia demands. Jordan is digging around in the trunk and makes a small pleased noise as he finds a shiny, crinkled blanket.

There’s another howl. A woman yelling “I told you not to face her alone!”

Scott shouting a defensive “We didn’t have a choice!” sounded strange with his fangs taking up so much of his mouth.

Lydia climbs over him to settle along his left. She pulls off her shirt and presses against his side. Years ago he would have killed for the opportunity. As it is, he can’t even focus on her because Jordan is doing the same thing to his right, and he is radiating so much heat that the first inch of skin-to-skin contact feels cold. Parrish puts an  arm around his shoulder and he’d make a comment about this being their first date but there didn’t seem to be enough air in his lungs for that. Derek’s attention turned to Stiles, eyes still flashing blue. “One comment and I’m moving to shotgun.” His clothes are taken off and tossed into the front seat. He shrinks, fur sprouting everywhere. He jumps into the backseat as a wolf. He curls up between Stiles and the blanket.

He was shivering. His teeth were chattering. He buries his fingers into soft fur. When Derek’s lip curls he knows his grip is too tight, but he can’t let go. “S-sorry” he shudders.

Lydia presses against one side, and Parrish sears against the other. He should be warm, but he feels colder now than he did before.

“Th-th-th-this isn’t w-w-working-“ He bites out.

Derek growls and climbs so that his warm, furry stomach is pressed against Stiles’ chest. His long legs stretch over a bony shoulder. His paws rest atop Parrish’s hand. His nose presses under a mole-flecked jaw. Stiles smelled like snow, not like himself. No wonder Scott had been so worried when he got on the scene. At least with the other people in the car he was starting to smell more like pack and less like that thing outside.

It was very warm under the blanket.

Stiles’ grip loosens, even though he was still shaking like a chihuahua.

He tries to rearrange his hind legs and ends up crooked.

By the time they reach the loft, Stiles is only shivering sporadically. His heartbeat sounds better.

Lydia is on the phone, but Parrish made sure a complaining Stiles lied down on the futon.

It seemed right to climb on top of Stiles there, too, even if he probably looked like an oversized lapdog. Burying his nose at the pulse on Stile’s throat led to more halfhearted protests but the noise was comforting.

The afghan tossed on top of them really helped it smell like home.

**Author's Note:**

> haven't touched these guys in a bit.


End file.
